Nuclear Tests Cutting Sales Of Beaujolais

By CRAIG R. WHITNEY

Published: November 17, 1995

PARIS, Nov. 16—
The annual ballyhoo over Beaujolais nouveau this year was upstaged in many places by boycotts to protest French nuclear tests in the Pacific, dealers said today.

In an annual marketing tactic that brings in about $100 million to producers of the fruity red wine, the first bottles from this year's Beaujolais harvest went on sale around the world at 12:01 A.M. Paris time.

The Beaujolais nouveau madness has already peaked in many countries, but when France resumed nuclear tests in French Polynesia, the 25 million to 30 million bottles of Beaujolais nouveau that usually go to foreign markets became a target.

The Consumers Union of Japan, where 2.5 million bottles were sold at the height of Beaujolais nouveau hype in 1990, called on customers to shun it, and in Akita a liquor store invited people to come in and smash as many bottles as they liked. It was unclear who picked up the tab.

French wine professionals say that the market for the wine has all but collapsed in Japan, the Netherlands and Scandinavia, and disappeared in Australia and New Zealand, which make plenty of wine of their own.

Indeed, Australian shiraz or New Zealand chardonnay sells in France for even less than Beaujolais nouveau, which went on sale briskly here today at prices ranging from $5 to $6 a bottle. "We sold a thousand bottles this morning," said a saleswoman at Gourmet Lafayette, an upscale food store in one of the biggest department stores in Paris.

In Sweden, television commercials by anti-nuclear groups showed a woman swishing French red wine around in her mouth and then spitting into the glass -- symbolically, what France was doing to the environment, as the sponsors saw it. The Netherlands, which took 4.8 million bottles last year, will take 25 percent fewer this year, according to the Interprofessional Beaujolais Wine Union, which also expected some losses in Germany.

But French-speaking Quebec ordered 144,000 bottles, almost half again as many as last year.

Consumers in France are expected to drink another 30 million bottles or so before Beaujolais stops being "nouveau" and becomes just plain Beaujolais after December.